From fruits to vegetables to animals, raccoons don’t miss a piece of food and will eat just about anything. These extremely adaptable critters survive anywhere and eat whatever is around. Raccoons are nocturnal omnivores that eat plants and animals both, meaning, they do not give up any food and will simply eat it. How about chocolate, can raccoons eat chocolate, and do they like it, should you feed chocolates? Let’s find out.
The Concise Answer…
Raccoons are opportunistic omnivores that will eat just about anything including chocolates. Adapting into the city, raccoons can and love to eat chocolate, sweets, and candy, in fact, there are videos of raccoons eating chocolates eagerly. But that doesn’t mean chocolates are beneficial. Most of the chocolates contain caffeine, nicotine, cocoa, and poisonous theobromine which is toxic for raccoons and some pets and smaller animals.
Too much chocolate lead to negative health effects or kill raccoons. Particularly, too much chocolate may result in side effects such as restlessness, vomiting, diarrhea, increased urination, and even death.
If you’ve a raccoon pet or just want to feed a raccoon out there, you may avoid feeding chocolate instead you can feed fruits, plants, and animals that are also beneficial. They need food to build up body fat to rest in the winter. That’s the short answer to can raccoons eat chocolate. But what raccoons cannot eat? Here’s the list.
What Does Raccoons Typically Eat?
With their sharp and formidable teeth, they are able to grind anything they would get to eat, despite that, they will also wet or water up the food to moisten and soften it in order to easily eat. Raccoons are good climbers and swimmers, but not good hunters. Although raccoons like meat, they prefer meals that don’t require hunting.
However, with their nimble paws, they only hunt small and weak animals like fish, rats, frogs, birds, worms, insects, chickens, mollusks, and even rabbits. In fact, raccoons love eating chickens but not rabbits, here’s why. But that’s not the only food they eat, raccoons will also eat berries, nuts, grapes, pet food, birds food, birds itself, and even waste food from the trash, but what about candy, sweets and chocolate, can raccoons eat chocolate? Well, yes, they do.
Love sweets? So do raccoons. Just like everyone, raccoons love sweets, whether it is included in fruit, plants, or anything else, raccoons love sweets and as chocolate is also sweet, they love it the most. But whether it be milky chocolate or dark chocolate, chocolates are very toxic and are even be lethal for raccoons.
While raccoons are pretty clever mammals, but they aren’t picky to eat. However, if you happen to have one or if you would like to feed one of those backyard bandits, you can probably feed anything except chocolates, not even dark chocolates, remember!
Can Raccoons Eat Chocolate?
Raccoons are amazing adaptative critters that eat anything, but that doesn’t mean you should feed everything they eat. There’s no doubt in can raccoons eat chocolate or not, in fact, they love to. While you may know chocolates are somehow bad to us, it is even lethal for raccoons and your pets. Chocolates are a mixture of toxic ingredients like theobromine that digest very slowly and affects blood flow, nervous system, and kidneys.
And depending on the sensitivity that raccoons and smaller animals are quite sensitive to those chemicals, and depending on the quantity, it can probably cause toxic reactions. Like it takes 150 mg of theobromine per kilogram of raccoon’s body weight to cause toxic reaction. The same rule is applied to dogs, cats, and other pets. While milk chocolate contains more sugar but dark chocolate contains less sugar but high theobromine appears in both meaning it could affect easier and harder.
However, if you’ve feed raccoons chocolate without realizing this, it won’t kill or cause those side effects with one piece of chocolate. But it is probably harmful and your love of helping and feeding with a nice piece of chocolate every day will cause those negative effects and eventually kill it. However, a nice chunk of chocolate in a day could cause those infections or death sooner. That is also applied to pets and smaller animals.
Why Chocolate Is Bad For Raccoons?
While chocolate is only harmful to us (But may also kill in case of large consumption), it is lethal for raccoons and pets even in less quantity. A small piece of chocolate mightn’t be lethal but it is far more harmful to raccoons than us. But a nice chunk of chocolate could lead to those side effects or could kill. The same is for humans, but it takes quite more chocolate to kill a person than a raccoon. It takes 1,000mg/kg for a human to cause toxic reactions or even kill.
But that amount is quite less for raccoons and pets. Particularly, it is around 400mg/kg body weight to kill raccoons. The smaller the pet or animal, the higher the chances of the kill but that isn’t applicable for some pets and animals like rats, mice. It takes more chocolates to kill rats and mice than humans due to their tolerance and the digestion system is defensive and less sensitive to chocolates than humans.
Do Raccoons Like Chocolate?
Like humans, raccoons have sweet receptors or tastebuds which means they can taste sweetness, unlike most animals. In fact, raccoons are mammals just like us. Means, sweets and fast food is the favorite of raccoons but are toxic to raccoons. These ubiquitous animals never say no to any food and are not even shy to steal it and whenever they get, they will likely consume it.
As they love to eat it, you might be prompted to feed chocolates to make them happy. It might make them happy for a few moments but assuming the results, it will eventually kill it, which isn’t nice unless you want to kill them which is also illegal nor the right way to do it.
Can Raccoons Eat Cocoa Beans or Plant?
Chocolates are made of cocoa beans which are from the seeds of cacao tree. Cacao beans and plants are bitter and no one would like to eat it except for monkeys, bats, and squirrels that mostly eat sweet pulps. Despite raccoons are omniverse, they occasionally eat beans and plants when available, but they are harmful to them like chocolates, and can’t digest it very well. As a result, raccoons eat cocoa beans and plants, but that isn’t beneficial.
However, cocoa beans are mixed with a large quantity of sugar and so it becomes quite tasteful and appealing to animals and kids. Not all animals favor chocolate or sweet because a large variety of animals do not have sweet buds or tastebuds, so they do not know and can’t taste the sweetness and that’s why they do not care about it. But those animals who could taste like dogs, raccoons definitely love sweets, however, cats do not have taste buds so they can’t taste sugar and don’t love sweets.
Which Animals Can Eat Chocolate?
All animals with sweet receptors or tastebuds favor chocolate but are poisonous for most animals espically domestic animals like dogs, cats, rabbits, and even horses. Animals love chocolates including dogs, squirrels, and rabbits but it has many problems behind and isn’t ideal food. In fact, dogs are affected quicker and could even kill due to the level of sensitivity and quick ingestion. Even wild animals like bears love chocolates despite they haven’t seen it.
They don’t know at first but once they taste it, they will love it. But neither for bears nor squirrels or any other animals chocolate is beneficial or without side effects. In the least case, it can cause serious side effects however, it’s lethal for most. Most animals can eat chocolate but will cause side effects or death.
Final Points
While chocolate is harmful to us, it is lethal for raccoons and dark chocolate (which is pretty beneficial for us) is even more lethal for raccoons and small animals. These smart adorable and fluffy social critter eats anything they get even food waste and roadkill, without caring what do they do to it. Chocolates might seem very sweet and enjoyable, and it is also what raccoons like, but in fact, it is lethal both of us and animals. It takes fewer chocolates to kill raccoons than us.
However, few chocolates could lead to many problems like restlessness, vomiting, diarrhea, increased urination, and even death. This poisoning could happen to all the animals that their metabolism is slower than humans. Thus, humans life is quite longer than raccoons which live for 2 – 3 years and it evacuates faster.
If your pet or raccoon eats some chocolate accidentally, it won’t really toxic unless it is a lot. There are tons of foods which you can feed raccoons other than chocolate. Raccoon’s favorite foods are fruits, plants, nuts, berries, insects, rodents, frogs, eggs, crayfish and animals. These extraordinarily furry bandits are probably fun watching and protecting your yard from rodents, small animals and pests. And that’s whether can raccoons eat chocolate or not.
Next time when you’re going to feed chocolates to raccoons, think about it again!
